Jared’s Latest TV Obsession; Strategic Communications with Jessica Chen; “And the Award Goes To…”

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Intro:  It’s the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia, with guest Jessica Chen.  We play and the award goes to, and then the whole, we are a show of culture for we celebrate the greatest condiment of all time, Miracle Whip!  But first, your host, Jared Correia.

[Music]

Jared Correia:  It’s time for the Legal Toolkit Podcast again.  That’s right.  This is Arthur Conan Doyle’s favorite podcast, or I’m sure would have been if he ever had a chance to listen to podcasts, poor bastard, and yes it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast even though my biscuit joiner isn’t used for what you think it is.  I’m your host, Jared Correia.  You’re stuck with me because Nick Mackay was unavailable, he was busy hosting the Tournament of Champions over at the dirty dozens.

I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations.  Find us online at redcavelegal.com.  I’m the COO of Gideon software.  We build chatbots so law firms can convert more leads and conversational document assembly tools so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately.  You can find out more about Gideon at gideonlegal.com.

Now, before we get our interview today with Jessica Chen, it’s going to be great, I want to take a moment to talk with you about my latest television obsession as you know I watch way too much TV.  I’ve talked about video games on this podcast before, sometimes I’m forced to play them with my family but I’m really not a video game guy per se.  I mean, getting an 8-bit Nintendo was a major life event for me, but it also was for every other seven-year-old in 1985.  I mean, they made a fucking movie about it, and yeah I’ve played a lot of Mario, Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!, Jaws, et cetera, et cetera.  Yes, I played video games in college like Wave Racer and GoldenEye on Nintendo 64.

But I really, really sucked because I didn’t put any time into this stuff like at all.  I have a gun in GoldenEye and my friends would drop their weapons and bitch slap me to death.  That was pretty fucking embarrassing, let me tell you.  Now, my son routinely humiliates me in Madden ’23, but can I be real with you for a second?  Why is there so many fucking buttons?

Here I am, started 2023 looking for a new TV series to watch and HBO is coming out with the show called The Last of Us, and they usually put out good shows and there are a lot of things to recommend this program in particular.  Here’s my announcements.  Spoilers to follow.  If you haven’t seen the complete first season of The Last of Us, which I just finished yesterday, go do that and then come back and listen to this show.  Don’t worry, we’ll wait.

All right, that’s enough of warning.  Let’s get back after it.  The Last of Us involves a fungal infection that mutates to affect humans and leads to a global pandemic that basically in a nutshell destroys society as people are turned into monsters effectively.  The fungus takes over your brain and controls you like a zombie.  What’s fucked up is that this is a real thing, by the way.  There’s a fungal infection that affects insects like this, which could theoretically morph into something that infects humans.  Good times, but I’m in.  This is like my thing, post-apocalyptic TV series.  All right, I’m kind of hooked already.

This show even kicks off with a fake clip of a scientist basically predicting that something like this could happen way back in the 1960s.  In the show timeline, the pandemic starts in 2003.  I love historical stuff like this, including historical fiction when it’s well done as it is here.  There’s also a scene in one of the later episodes where the pandemic starts in Asia and one scientist is like fuck it, bomb the entire city.  This seems really bad and that’s because the infected humans are violently attacking other infected humans because the virus wants to spread and that’s how it spreads.

Now, if that concept alone doesn’t reel you in, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t, the show also starts Pedro Pascal, who is like the most famous actor on the planet right now.  He’s in Game of Thrones.  He was in Narcos.  He was fantastic in a movie called The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent where he plays Nicolas Cage’s biggest fan.  Trust me, this movie’s awesome.  You should watch it.  He’s fucking Mandalorian in the Mandalorian, plus he’s BFFs with Sarah Paulson, who is great and pretty much everything she does and she helped him get a role in Game of Thrones.

As the dude who got his head crushed in, but I digress, so the joke is he always plays these adoptive dad type roles, see Yoda, comma, baby, and that’s the case here too.  In The Last of Us, he takes care of a girl who’s actually immune to the fungal infection.  You probably see where this going.  The girl, played by Bella Ramsey and named Ellie, Pascal’s character is called Joel, was also in Game of Thrones.  This girl was, she was a salty, ten-year-old Monarch.  The deal is Joel needs to get Ellie to some doctors who can use her to extract a cure and save humanity.

(00:05:21)

Low stakes or not, and then as I’m hyped up to watch this show, I find out that The Last of Us is based on a video game and I get cold feet.  Now, if this were based on a book, I would have been all over this shit, no questions asked.  Because remember, I’m biased against video games because I’m old.  I think they’re lame and that they lack depth, but in the end I was like, fuck it, I’m just going to watch it.  I mean, every video game adaptation can’t be bad, right?

Fortunately, The Last of Us is very good.  I think Breaking Bad is the best television show of all time, just brilliant on so many levels.  But The Last of Us is the best TV show I’ve seen since Breaking Bad.  Obviously, I’m telling everybody watch it like I’m doing right now.  It’s probably getting annoying at this point.  The plus good, the acting is great.  You already knew that.  However, I think what I like best about The Last of Us is that the pace is different than other TV shows I watched.  It’s almost like an anthology and I think maybe that’s because the video game scenes are set up this way or the gameplay is compacted so that the episodes are like these really intense self-contained journeys.  It gets really amazing.

Again, I’m coming at this as someone who has never played The Last of Us video game and I know nothing at all about the plot or what’s coming up before it smashes directly into me while I’m watching the show.  Maybe that’s the best way to watch it, I don’t know.  Maybe this is part of the video game structure as well but you’re poking around on an episode and then all of a sudden five minutes are left and this massive tragedy happens leaving you dumbfounded and profoundly sad.  I’m trying not to watch the show before you go to bed.  Seriously, that’s a real public service announcement.

These episodes are really super impactful.  They’re some of the best standalone TV episodes I’ve ever seen.  The first episode is pretty chill until a full-blown pandemic breaks out overnight and Jill’s daughter gets attacked by an elderly lady who’s been infected.  But don’t worry, his daughter fucking dies mid episode because one of the government officials on site is killing people even if they’re not infected.  The government’s incompetent, that’s not believable.  Damn, but Jill’s brother saves him and 20 years later, he ends up in a quarantine zone in Boston probably looting some dunks.  Although (00:07:32) is that they actually raid a Cumberland Farms at a later episode.  Then, they have this big screen grab of the Rocky Mountains and they’re like 10 miles west of Boston.  Well, not quite.

But the pilot episode is really well done.  It’s kind of staggering.  It reminds me of the pilot episode of The Lost which is all just like chaos at the end and then some dude gets sucked into a jet engine.  The odd-numbered episodes are the best in my opinion and episode 3 is a standout also.  It involves Nick Offerman, yes, Ron fucking Swanson himself as a doomsday prepper, who eyes out from the authorities and fortifies his own town rather than entering the quarantine zone.  The scenes involving him going out and gathering goods in his pickup truck, listen to classic rock on volume 11, just sublime.  I’m here for it.

But there’s a Twist when he rescues a guy from one of his traps.  It turns out that Ron Swanson is gay, and then the greatest love story ever told reveals itself.  Seriously, best love story I’ve ever seen depicted in a single episode of television, and there was some controversy about this when it came out, but it’s just really good.  Honestly, if you’re not into or over two bitter dudes making out in 2023, I don’t know what to tell you.  Just watch it.

Episode 5 was maybe the saddest episode in my opinion.  Joel and Ellie meet these two brothers, and the older brothers protecting his deaf younger brother.  There’s a big battle and the four of them escaped.  I’m like, “Cool, Joel and Ellie have some buddies so travel with.  That’s great.  There’s only five minutes left in the episode.  What could possibly go wrong?”  Uh-oh, the younger brother got bitten by one of the infected zombies and now, he’s infected.  Oh, but wait, Ellie’s immune, so she sensibly tries to manage like a janky blood transfusion, see if she can save him.  Of course, the next day, he turns into a monster anyway, and his brother has to kill him, then immediately shoots himself.  End scene.  I mean, the fuck?  The show is just emotionally devastating.

In episode 8, which is the episode that came out before the season finale, the penultimate episode, Joel’s injured, gets stabbed, and Ellie tries to protect him, but she’s kidnapped by an evil preacher, who it turns out is leading a group of cannibals.  Oh, and he’s a pedophile and tries to rape Ellie in a burning building.  At Jesus Christ, I mean, the good news here is that Ellie stabs the shit out of this would-be rapist to find Shoal who calls her by the nickname he used to use for his late daughter.  Is it dusty in here or is it just me?

(00:10:00)

Now, season finale, which I watched last night.  It’s pretty amazing.  Ellie and Joel are captured by the group that are looking for the cure to the infected.  That’s good, right?  They’re going to be able to find a cure now.  Everything is going to be happy.  Show’s over.  That’s a wrap.  Thanks for coming everybody.  Well, not so much.  Ellie’s already in the operating room when Joel starts to realize that since the infection attacks the brain, they’re going to have to kill Ellie to extract enough samples to find a cure.

They give Joel a gun.  Seriously, they gave him a gun, and they have two guys, two fucking guys.  That’s it, two guys, really, who lead them out of this makeshift hospital and predictably kills him in the stairwell.  Joel though has no time to fuck around which is one of the reasons why I really like this character.  After he kills the first guy, he asks the second guy, where is she, and when he doesn’t respond immediately, Jill says, “I don’t have time for this,” and shoots him in the face.  Good times.

After that, she’ll just go shithouse.  He kills a doctor performing the surgery.  He kills the leader of the group supporting the doctor, and he pretty much kills everybody else.  Then he takes off in a pickup truck with Ellie.  Only, he lies to Ellie, who was knocked out this whole time for her surgery and says they found other people who are immune, this is a total lie, which he reasserts at the end of the episode.  That’s a problem because Ellie was actually willing to sacrifice her life to provide the cure.

But you’ll want to save her as any father, surrogate or otherwise, will want to do even if the pandemic continues on.  Thus, season 2 awaits.  I can’t wait personally.  Maybe I should go play Red Dead Redemption or some shit.  Nah, not going to do that.

[Music]

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[Music]

Jared Correia:  Hi everybody.  Let’s get to the meat in the middle of this legal sandwich.  Today’s meat is jellyfish.  Wait!  Is fish even a meat?  Anyway, let’s get after it.  It’s time to interview our guest.  Today, we have a really great guest for you, making her first appearance and maybe your last appearance on the Legal Tech Podcast, we’ll see how things go and if she wants to come back, it’s Jessica Chen, the founder and CEO of Soulcast Media.  Jessica, welcome.  How are you?

Jessica Chen:  I’m great.  Thank you so much for having me.

Jared Correia:  Thanks for coming on.  You’re not an attorney, so good call on your part, by the way.  Can you tell me about what it is that you do, because I think you’ve built some really interesting career for yourself?

Jessica Chen:  Yes.  I was going to say I’m not an attorney, which if anything, it adds a nice refreshed retake in terms of the work that I do.  Long story short, I used to be a former television news reporter.  It’s funny, I used to work with attorneys but usually when it was not good stuff.  I used to be on TV.  I was a journalist for about 10 years.  I was at ABC and NBC.  I was in New York for a few years.  After about 10 years in news was when I decided to leave and start my own agency which is Soulcast Media.

We are a communications training firm, so we work with a lot of Fortune 500 companies, a lot of law firms, to teach folks how to become better communicators, more strategic communicators, and help them with things like their elevator pitches, presentation skills, investor relations, things like that.  Communications is really what we do.

Jared Correia:  It’s interesting that you call it strategic communications.  I know you didn’t invent that term, obviously, but I think a lot of law firms especially you’re just like, you know we’re just going to throw stuff against the wall and see what happens.  Everything’s like super ad hoc, but I imagine they’re not the only businesses who do that.  I assume part of what you do is come in and be like, “All right, everybody.  We need an actual strategy to do this,” so you advise them on that first and then the implementation.  Is that how it goes or am I way off there?

Jessica Chen:  You’re right.  A lot of times, communications happens because it’s you’re reacting to something, right?  Stuff’s not going as planned.  Oh my God, we have to get an all-hands meeting.  We have to send a memo.  Oftentimes, it’s just thrown together very last minute, but oftentimes, when I work with folks, it’s like, okay, let’s take a bird’s eye view of what the heck is happening.

(00:15:13)

Then, be strategic in what are we going to say in how we’re going to say, because you have to be pretty mindful of how people are going to interpret what you’re going to essentially communicate.  Essentially I come in, not only do I help with bigger vision communications, but it’s like, how can we craft this so you’re not getting people screaming and yelling and freaking out essentially.

Jared Correia:  Yes, I love that.  That’s great.  I’m always interested in people’s career paths.  What’s cool is we get a lot of founders on the show, and everybody’s got this really interesting trajectory of how they end up where they are.  I can see why as a news person you would have come out and set up a communications company.  But can you talk a little bit about how that transit like, when did you decide to do something else?  Why did you decide to do this and how did you like, rip the Band-Aid off and make the job?  Because that’s hard to do, if you’re getting the salary to start your own company.

Jessica Chen:  It was really hard to do, but to be honest, I’ve always had this entrepreneurial spirit inside of me and I think that’s actually why I enjoy news because there’s a lot of independence in it too.  You’re assigned something and you just have the whole day to figure out how to put it together.  I already was like itching that when I was a reporter, but to be honest, the reason why I started Soulcast Media was because I was not a good communicator.  This is the honest truth.  I grew up in a very traditional household, where communication speaking up was not something that I was really taught.

Fast forward when I started working in news, it was almost like a huge culture shock where I was suddenly around all these really loud charismatic ultra competent communicators, if you can imagine people on TV.  For me, I was just kind of like that, to be honest, I was really a quiet person who had a really hard time figuring out how do I pitch myself?  How do I talk about my stories?  How do I get people to listen to my ideas?

I always tell folks that starting my career as a journalist was actually the best training ground to become a better communicator, because you’re communicating every single day presenting on TV, interviewing people.  That’s actually why I started Soulcast Media because I wanted to help folks who did not see themselves as naturally strong communicators.  I wanted to teach those skills to people, so that’s why I started Soulcast Media.

Jared Correia:  That’s really cool.  It’s funny you mentioned growing up in traditional household.  When I was a kid, I was around a lot of Portuguese immigrants that I lived around, like first generation, and my kids were like, “What was it like when you’re a kid?”  I’m like, “Well, if you try to communicate, your mom would probably hit you with a wooden spoon.”  You can say a whole lot.

Jessica Chen:  It’s safe.

Jared Correia:  Somebody thought it was you.

Jessica Chen:  I agree.  I’m Asian and we’re not often thought to, you definitely don’t talk back to people who are older, right?  Oh my goodness.  It’s a lot of things like that, that don’t teach you things like how do you advocate for yourself, how do you showcase your work.  Actually, in fact, Jared, you and I are connected through a mutual friend and I just did a whole retreat with their attorneys on how do you put together a fantastic elevator pitch?  It’s funny because that’s also communications.  How do you talk about yourself?

Jared Correia:  I heard it was great by the way, so if you’re an attorney or a law firm owner, you’re listening, you need a retreat leader, I think you got one right here.  All right.  I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I read on your website that you won an Emmy Award.  Is that true?

Jessica Chen: I did.  I do have an Emmy Award.  It’s sitting on my shelf right now.

Jared Correia:  Do you like take that out and put it in the car next to you and seatbelt it in and show people?  That must be cool though, winning an Emmy.  Did you expect that that was going to happen or was it sort of like this thing that just occurred?

Jessica Chen:  Oh, I mean, you never expect it, you dream of it.  That’s the epitome.  Honestly, when I started as a reporter, that was always the dream.  If you can win an Emmy Award, you know you’ve made it.  But it took years.  It’s not like I won it right out of college.  It took a lot of work to eventually get to a place where I felt comfortable solid in my storytelling, my journalism ability, and this award is really a combination of teamwork really.

Everybody says that, but it’s really true.  I could not have won this without a team effort.  The way it works is, so we have shows.  You have your 4:00 p.m. newscast or 5:00 p.m. newscast.  This award was because of I think it was a 4:00 p.m. newscast that I was on.  It was a bunch of us producers, reporters, riders and we just put on a fantastic show.  And so, that’s essentially how we won that Emmy Award.  It’s sitting on my shelf right now.

Jared Correia:  I think that’s amazing.  You’re the first person I know who’s won an Emmy, I think.  Now, we’re still waiting on our first nomination, but we’re going to keep trucking.  We know our audio quality is great.  Let me ask you this.  If anybody goes to Jessica’s website, I’ll provide the information here in a little bit.  You work with some pretty major companies.  You’re a news reporter.  Now, you run this big business.  You got these massive companies.  I know this is probably a confidence thing, too, but how do you go from being a news reporter, starting a company and landing like really big fish like that, because that’s not easy to do?

(00:20:27)

Jessica Chen:  I have to say, there’s so much, and for those who use it or don’t use it, I really have to say LinkedIn is —

Jared Correia:  LinkedIn is great.

Jessica Chen:  It’s the platform you want to be on if you want to build thought leadership.  It’s the platform where people, you’re not needing to do any dancing videos.  People there really are genuinely interested in understanding business.  To be honest, if you want to establish yourself, build your credibility, build your brand as a firm or as an individual, LinkedIn is truly where it’s at.  I started Soulcast Media the same time I started posting basically being on LinkedIn, and from there, it grew simultaneously, and it grew really fast.

Jared Correia:  Yes.  You do a lot of stuff with LinkedIn.  I noticed you’re pretty heavily involved there and your profile is great.  Do you have any tips for people in terms of how they should use LinkedIn?  Do you need LinkedIn Premium to do the kind of stuff that you’re doing?  How do you build yourself up as a thought leader, because that’s important for any business owner?

Jessica Chen:  It really is.  I know there’s some folks out there who are like, “I don’t want to post stuff on LinkedIn.”  It doesn’t have to even be so complicated.  I think, if you are just starting out and you want to just get your feet wet a little bit, simply just following, because you can follow folks too.  You can follow folks, comment on their stuff, and this is what I always say.  If you start commenting on people’s stuff who you admire, suddenly you become a warm contact.  People will start to see your name, they start to get familiar with you, and then if you really want to reach out to them, they’ll be like, “Oh, I kind of recognize that name.”  As long as your, of course, commenting thoughtful things.  But there’s different ways.  I mean, I personally have LinkedIn Premium.  It’s not that expensive honestly, and it gives you a lot of insight of who’s looking at your stuff.

Jared Correia:  The data collection’s crazy.

Jessica Chen:  Exactly.  Highly recommend.

Jared Correia:  I let me ask you this while we’re on the topic of social media.  Are there other platforms you use?  Do you use all of them as many as you can?  LinkedIn is probably your anchor, but what else do you use in addition to that?

Jessica Chen:  LinkedIn’s my anchor because that’s where my audience is.  I’m always trying to reach folks in the business field.  I mean, even in law.  I think that might have been how I got even connected with Ann, it’s probably through LinkedIn, our mutual connection, but Instagram, yes.  I do have to say, we have been playing around with TikTok a little bit, but I was truly resisting that platform.

Jared Correia:  No dancing?

Jessica Chen:  Because I did not want to dance.  I did not want to dance and post content, but it’s nice in that TikTok, you can actually still post some thoughtful content.  You just have to package it in a different way.  It has to be really poppy.  I have a person who does that for me.  But we try to be, I guess you could say everywhere, but to be honest, we’re really go with LinkedIn.  We’re kind of just trying to double down on that.

Jared Correia:   I think that’s awesome.  Go where your strength is.  All right.  In terms of some of the other stuff.  I noticed that you work on building courses and it looks like some of those may be live courses, some of those may be for your recording courses, and attorneys are starting to do that and trying to sell those as products which is effectively what you’re doing.  How do you build a good course?  I’m sure there’s a lot of work that goes into that as well.

Jessica Chen:  It’s funny because I never realized how much my background in news helped me build these courses, because you have to write the content, you have to produce a content, and even things like this, like audio, video, it’s a full package.  But there’s two ways I go about creating courses.  One is I actually have a partnership with LinkedIn.  I’m a LinkedIn learning instructor, so I work with their internal team to create all these courses.  I have 10 courses with them.  It’s been viewed over 2 million times.  It’s all communications related.

Jared Correia:  That’s amazing.

Jessica Chen:  It is.  It’s very, very lucky to work with such a great team, but on the other side is we here at Soulcast, we create our own courses too.  To be honest, for those who want to get started, make it easy for yourself.  When I started creating courses, I didn’t even use any sort of fancy equipment.  I actually just took my iPhone and I just recorded courses.  I got a good microphone though, that was very important.  Get a good microphone.

Jared Correia:  Yes, the mics.

Jessica Chen:  Just use your phone, and then there’s a lot of apps now where you can just have teleprompters, and you can just write out what you want to say.  You just read it from there.  I just say just start and you will just naturally get better at it.  Then, once you package these courses, like what you said, Jared, you can sell it, you can market it.  Again, you will become an expert known in that specific industry.

A lot of the stuff is evergreen.  Like your LinkedIn post remain online forever.  Your courses are up there, usually mobbed, that’s really smart.  I will say, I want to confirm for everybody, they can’t see you but you got a pretty badass microphone here.  I can confirm.

(00:25:15)

One more thing I forgot to ask you off the top, this will be my last question.  How did you come up with the name for your company, Soulcast?  Usually, people have a good story around that.  Maybe you’re the first one who doesn’t, I don’t know.

Jessica Chen:  It’s nothing profound, honestly, but there was some thought behind it in the sense that it was really one night I was sitting there.  I was like, “Well, I want to start my own company, but what do I want to name it?”  I actually was, I had a notepad, had a pen, and I was just writing down all these words, that meant something to me.  Broadcast meant something to me because of my experience in broadcast TV, and soul was something that was meaningful to me because to me, thoughtful, meaningful communications really starts within.

I started to figure out ways like how can I combine the two?  That’s essentially how soul and cast came together.  Soulcast.  Then, the media was just because of my background in media and because we do a lot of content, communications and it just kind of fit together.

Jared Correia:  Yeah, I love it.  It’s super unique.  This is great.  Jessica, will you stay around for the final segment?  You’re not sick of us yet?

Jessica Chen:  If you don’t roast me too hard.

Jared Correia:  No, it won’t be too bad.  As Jessica alluded to, we’ll take one final sponsor break, so we can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice.  Then, stay tuned for the rump roast.  That’s right.  It’s even more subtle than the roast beast.

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[Music]

Jared Correia:  Welcome back, everybody.  That’s right, we’re once again at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit, it’s called the rump roast.  It’s a grab bag of short-form topics all of my choosing.  Why do I get to pick?  Because I’m the host.  Jessica, as you may know, as an Emmy winner, the Academy Awards took place last night.  Now, because you’re an Emmy winner, you’re actually a quarter of the way to the EGOT.  You’re closer to winning an Oscar also than anyone I know.  Let’s do a little Oscars trivia in this segment I like to call, And the award goes to.  Will the award go to Jessica?  I guess we’ll find out.  Before we get started, do you have any commentary on last night’s award show because we’re recording this the day after the event took place.

Jessica Chen:  My comment, and this is almost to save myself, I didn’t watch it.

Jared Correia:  Oh good.  I like that.  You threw the disclaimer out there.

Jessica Chen:  I did.  I have to let you know.  Whatever question I get stumped on it’s because I didn’t get a chance to catch it.

Jared Correia:  We’ll do a little historical stuff.  We won’t do a whole lot of recent stuff.  I got five questions for you.  We’ll see how you do.  We’ve had people go from zero correct answers to five correct answers.  It’s really a mixed bag.  We’re all friends here.  Let me ask you Jessica, which movie won the first ever best picture Oscar.  I’m going to give you some choices.  Option one, Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Option two, Wings.  Option three, All Quiet on the Western Front.  Let me know if you need those again.  First ever best picture Oscar.  1927, I believe.

Jessica Chen: It has to be the first one, right?

Jared Correia:  Everything Everywhere All At Once.  Okay, so I’m going to give you a mulligan here because you clearly didn’t watch the Oscars last night because that won the best picture this year.  Let’s reduce our possibilities here, Wings or All Quiet on the Western Front.  First best picture Oscar.  You just flip a coin at this point.

Jessica Chen:  All Quiet.

Jared Correia:  Oh no, Wings.

Jessica Chen:  No!

Jared Correia:  Yes.  I appreciate the effort though.  You really sold out in this one.  All Quiet on the Western Front, which I guess was nominated a new version of it for some Oscars this year.  It won the third best picture Oscar in 1930.  There’s a silent film called Wings that won the first best picture Oscar ever.  It was a romantic comedy about World War II fighter pilots.  I mean, we try to teach people stuff during the podcast as well.

Here’s one.  An easy yes or no.  You got a 50% shot here.  Has anyone named Oscar ever won an Oscar?

Jessica Chen:  No.

(00:30:02)

Jared Correia:  It’s yes.  There’s only one dude, Oscar Hammerstein from Rodgers and Hammerstein won two Oscars for best original song.  Hey, we’re only 40% of the way through.  I feel like you can still save this.  I believe in you.  All right.  There is something at the Oscars called the big five, best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, and best screenplay.  Which of these movies have won the big five awards in the same year at the Oscars?  Silence of the Lambs in 1991, It Happened One Night in 1934, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975.

Jessica Chen:  Give me another clue.

Jared Correia:  I said or, but there may be multiple winners, or they could all have won the big five awards at the Oscars.

Jessica Chen:  Is it all of the above?

Jared Correia:  Yes!  All of the above!  All right.  You nailed it.  Yes, all three of those movies won all those Awards.  All right.  Here we go.  Let me know if you want some hints.  I’m more than happy to give hints.  Two more.

Jessica Chen:  Let’s do it.

Jared Correia:  Which of these people has posthumously won an Oscar.  Give me more than one.  Peter Finch for Network.  Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight.  Marlon Brando for Godfather II.  Posthumous Oscar wins could be more than one person.  Now that I’m saying that, it likely is.

Jessica Chen:  Is it all the above?  Is that the answer again?

Jared Correia:  Just the Australians.  Marlon Brando, American, won his Oscar and declined it, but Peter Finch and Heath Ledger, both Australians, interestingly, are the only two people ever who have won an Oscar posthumously.  I’m going to give that one to you.  2 of 4.  Now, to go over 500 in the rump roast, one more question for you.  Which was the first horror movie to be nominated for best picture?  First horror movie to be nominated for best picture?  Was it the Exorcist in 1973, the Silence of the Lambs in 1991, or Parasite in 2019?  First.

Jessica Chen:  Parasite was a good one.

Jared Correia:  I love Parasite.  That’s a great movie.  But, was it good enough to be the first?

Jessica Chen:  I know.  But it almost seems it’s too late because it was, you said, 2019.  I almost want to say —

Jared Correia:  We’re down to the Silence of the Lambs in 1991 and the Exorcist from 1973.

Jessica Chen:  Gosh.

Jared Correia:  We’ve got another coin flip here.

Jessica Chen:  I don’t want to say it’s the Exorcist.  I don’t want to say that.

Jared Correia:  But maybe we should, maybe you should.

Jessica Chen:  Should I say yes?

Jared Correia:  Maybe you should.

Jessica Chen:  Yeah, okay.

Jared Correia:  It is the Exorcist!  Yes!  Jessica, you got 60% on the rump roast, pretty good.  I’m really impressed.  Yeah, the Exorcist was crazy.  My dad told me that when that movie came out, people were like throwing up and running out of movie theaters.  I guess it was really like one of the first mainstream horror movies and people just weren’t prepared for it.

Jessica Chen:  I actually haven’t watched, I’ve never watched that movie.

Jared Correia:  Neither have I.

Jessica Chen:  It’s because I, even watching Parasite was I was like — but it wasn’t actually too bad to be honest, in my opinion.  It was very interesting, but the Exorcist, something along the lines of those kind of movies just, I don’t know, kind of makes me go —

Jared Correia:  Parasite I felt like was more of a psychological thriller.  But you should see Parasite, it’s a great movie.  Jessica’s right.  Thank you for coming on.  This was really fun.  You’re a great sport.

Jessica Chen:  Well, thanks, Jared.  Thanks for having me.

Jared Correia:  Performed very well here.  I’m totally impressed.  Until next time, take it easy.  Thanks for coming.

Jessica Chen:  Thanks, Jared.

Jared Correia:  If you want to find out more about Jessica Chen and Soulcast Media, visit soulcastmedia.com.  That’s S-O-U-L-C-A-S-T-M-E-D-I-A.com.  soulcastmedia.com.  Now, for those of you listening intently in (00:34:14) California, I’ve got a great Spotify playlist for you.  We’ve got a list of songs that have won the Academy award for best song.  Only the very best for you, at least, according to the Academy.

Now, I’ve run out of time today to talk about why Miracle Whip is a superior condiment, well, we may have to dedicate an entire episode on that topic at some point in the future, so watch out for that.  Good mayonnaise talk.  Wait, it’s not mayonnaise, it’s a Miracle Whip.  This is Jared Correia reminding you that the moving walk is coming to an end.

[Music]

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